Author and scholar Hilary Holladay, whose Substack publication “Byrd Street” has filled the gap left by the virtual dissolution of local journalism in Orange County, will speak to the Lake of the Woods Democratic Club on August 13.
The meeting will take place at 1:30 p.m. in Classroom I of the LOW Community Center.
Holladay, a former writer for The Orange County Review, founded Byrd Street in 2024 after the county’s only local newspaper was purchased by an out-of-county company who does not provide any local reporting. Byrd Street is available at byrdstreet.substack.com.
Holladay is the author of several books, most recently “The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography,” published by P1rinceton University Press. Her published works include poetry and fiction as well as biography and journalism. She was the inaugural Sharp Writer in residence at the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2025.
Holladay holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in English from the College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She founded the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for American Studies and ran a series of conferences on Kerouac and the Beat Generation for more than a decade. She was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and taught at James Madison University and the University of Virginia.
